Jan. 28 - Lockheed Martin Corp.'s plant in Jefferson County will become the new headquarters for its space-systems division, as part of a companywide restructuring announced Thursday.

Albert Smith, a Lockheed executive vice president who has run space systems from company headquarters in Bethesda, Md., will move to Denver next week as part of an effort to decentralize operations at the struggling defense and aerospace giant.

The division will be renamed Lockheed Martin Space Systems Co. and will have three key units:

The Denver operations, previously astronautics, which will remain based at the Jefferson County Waterton Canyon plant.

The Sunnyvale operations, previously missiles and space, which will remain based in Sunnyvale, Calif.

The Michoud operations, previously Michoud space systems, which will remain based in New Orleans.

Lockheed Chairman Vance Coffman announced the changes Thursday, and said as part of the restructuring 2,800 jobs will be eliminated companywide. No more than 90 to 120 jobs are expected to be lost in the Denver area, where Lockheed employs 6,150 people.

"It streamlines management and increases the speed of decision-making,"

said Evan McCollum, Lockheed's spokesman in Jefferson County. "Instead of preparing information and taking it to Mr. Smith in Bethesda, he'll be down the hall."

The company's reorganization also includes major changes at the Fort Worth, Texas, aircraft division and is the second in four months as Lockheed struggles to cut costs and return to profitability. Coffman said the changes are expected to save $200 million a year.

The majority of the job cuts - about 2,500 - will come from the aircraft operations in Fort Worth, Palmdale, Calif., and Marietta, Ga.

"There was a sigh of nervous relief on everybody's part," said Tom Clark, executive director of the Jefferson Economic Council, which attracts and retains businesses. "We knew this was coming, but we didn't know where this would fall out." The space-systems division will comprise operations in Sunnyvale, where 10,400 workers design and produce missiles, spacecraft and satellite systems for telecom and defense. But the reorganization will cut about 180 to 240 of those Sunnyvale jobs.

Also reporting to Denver will be a space-shuttle manufacturing and research plant in New Orleans. The operation at Michoud employs 2,630 people, and it will lose about 30 to 40 jobs in the change.

The changes will take place in Denver next week when Smith, a 14-year Lockheed veteran, and at least four other top executives arrive. Tom Marsh, who is the president and general manager of the Denver operations, will be Smith's deputy.

The consolidation of top executives in Denver should give Denver more prestige - and possibly more job security to local workers.

"The last place they tend to leave when they fall on hard times is their corporate headquarters,"

Clark said. "It will also drive more dollars into the Colorado economy because money that now goes into Bethesda will start coming in here." The other major move toward decentralization affects Fort Worth, which will become the division headquarters of Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Co., overseeing the F-16, F-22 and Joint Strike fighters and C-130J transport operations. Executive Vice President Dain Hancock, now based in Bethesda, will move to Fort Worth to run the new company, which will include the Palmdale and Marietta operations.

Lockheed, which employs 140,000 people, has been struggling for months to find ways to cut costs and create a flatter business structure.

Peter B. Teets, Lockheed's president and chief operating officer, stepped down last year, taking responsibility for disappointing financial results, which led the defense contractor to slash its earnings estimates for this year by more than half.

The company's stock has followed suit, plummeting to a 52week low of $19.44 Thursday from a high of $46.

Last month, Lockheed put its 700,000-square-foot facility in Deer Creek on the auction block for $62 million, hoping to consolidate its 1,800 employees who work there at its Waterton Canyon campus.

The changes to the company's space-systems division are expected to save Lockheed about $30 million to $40 million a year. But the bulk of the savings will come from the company's consolidated aeronautical-systems business unit.

Exec's mission: Create major space hub

Smith will pack his bags and move next week for the second time in four months. This time, his mission is to turn Denver into one of four major hubs for the aerospace giant.

In September, the Lockheed veteran got a promotion to executive vice president of space systems - a job that sent him to Lockheed's headquarters in Bethesda, Md., from Sunnyvale, Calif., where he spent most of his 14-year career.

Thursday's reorganization will move Smith to the Rocky Mountains next week.

Smith spent time as a chief engineer in the CIA before joining Lockheed as an engineering director in 1985. At Sunnyvale, where he was president of missiles and space, he earned a reputation as a straight-talking, decisive leader, who headed up the Milstar program, one of the company's premier satellite projects.

"It's a program about which people in Sunnyvale are very proud," said Dave Waller, a spokesman in Sunnyvale. "It was the most powerful communications satellite for the government and a tremendous technological achievement."

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